Each appliance, delivered as an OVA or OVF, can have one or more properties attached to it. These properties are mostly used to configure the appliance. In PowerCLI we have the Get-OvfConfiguration cmdlet. It returns the user configurable properties from an OVF or OVA file in a hash table.

But what about upgrading an appliance? Most, if not all, of the Ovf Properties are already entered for the older version of the appliance. Can’t we use that information to upgrade the appliance? And avoid having to retype all that information?

And to take away the suspense, of course, that can be done with a bit of PowerShell!

I do love integration, and especially when it is done in a new, innovative way.

My friend Dennis Zimmer, from Opvizor, recently gave me access to a preview of one of their new tools, which they called ChatOps Bot for VMware vSphere. It combines vSphere API calls with Slack API calls. Needless to say I liked the concept. And I can see many interesting possibilities.